07: Days of Future Past

Yup. It’s the 21st century, and what a bust. I don’t know a damned soul who wears a silvery jumpsuit.

Here at the B-Masters Cabal, we understand your disappointment that what was supposed to be the future instead became our present. So we present, for your enjoyment and edification, a collection of reviews of those bygone movies which foresaw a tomorrow that never came.

“Now
they plan the ultimate marriage of man and woman, combining half of Nurmi with half of Connie. From the looks of it they are going to do this right down the center too. I have a major wake up call for the mad scientists. There are a couple places on the human body requiring a command decision and the groin is just the first that comes to mind.”

“At night Morgan holes up at his house, which has been fortified with the tools necessary to fend off the hellspawn that craves his blood – crosses, garlic, mirrors, naked pictures of Rush Limbaugh weightlifting, etc.”

“Hitting an arbitrary sequence of lighted doodads on his control panel, Patterson warns everyone to get ready for “maximum acceleration.” (Science!) This involves a big-ass flame shooting out of the ship’s tail, although you got me where they’re stowing all the fuel for this.”

“Made in 1966, the story of Queen Of Blood takes place in 1990, a time when space has been conquered, quilted clothing is at the cutting edge of fashion, and macho astronauts call each other “baby” (or at least, they do if they’re played by Dennis Hopper).”

“A voice over the PA system calls for all deviants to assemble in the central area. They line up in parade formation. The three newbies are in front. (We note that this prison camp, which has a lot of vegetation, either has some high-grade, futuristic fumigation system or there are no parasites in this future. Each of the prisoners has a full head of hair, and nobody is scratching his head.)”

“Needless to say, a lot of people aren’t all that excited about being forcibly located to New Mexico. They might be persuaded to leave a crime-ridden hellhole like The Bronx if they got to go somewhere besides a desolate hellholle out in the middle of nowhere. Not to insult New Mexico, or The Bronx for that matter.”

“Cameron was canny enough to realize that any new communications medium is going to have an immediate reception in the underground: porn, ultra-violence, etc. Not unlike the Internet, whose first for-real profitable businesses were all porn-related, the early adopters of the squid technology are all on the sleazy side of the street.”

“We are given a reason for Lisa’s presence on the ship: The only other qualified scientist weighed one hundred and twenty pounds more than Lisa, and as Paul tells us, “We need every ounce of equipment we can carry.” We can almost see the space academy now, with a sign over its door reading “No fat chicks.””

“Great machines mine the inside of mountains, strip-mining from the inside out. An impressive montage plays out, men working against the background of enormous machines – nothing says futuristic progress like freakishly huge machines. There is even a scene with enormous beakers filled with bubbling liquid. Science!“